Poems from the Hoot

Thursday

May 27, 2010 at 2:00 AM

The final Hoot of the 2009-10 Portsmouth Poet Laureate season is scheduled for Wednesday, June 2, with featured readers Meg Kearney and Betsy Sholl. The Hoot is held at Café Espresso, 800 Islington St., Portsmouth, beginning at 7 p.m. Sign up for the open mike, which begins at 8 p.m. Check www.pplp.org for information.

The final Hoot of the 2009-10 Portsmouth Poet Laureate season is scheduled for Wednesday, June 2, with featured readers Meg Kearney and Betsy Sholl. The Hoot is held at Café Espresso, 800 Islington St., Portsmouth, beginning at 7 p.m. Sign up for the open mike, which begins at 8 p.m. Check www.pplp.org for information.

One of the problems of an open mike reading is the transient nature of the act of listening to poetry. A poem as complex in thought and as rich in imagery as John Simon's "Disposition" requires several listenings, several silent readings, time to ponder and to return to the work in re-examination. John's reading, in the final moments of May's Hoot, left the audience with a sense of grief and loss and with the powerful visual image of the heron, perhaps the heron as symbol of death. Looking at the poem in print, we appreciate John's description of the fallen narrator, all angles, and the comparison to the heron, all angles. In John's conclusion, the speaker seems to have accepted our lack of control in the time of loss, control over what is taken from us and what happens to it, and also the lack of control over what we leave behind and what happens to that.

Disposition

Fallen, like stacked blocks, a house of cards, bridge

made of sticks, in a jumble, all at angles, onto the floor,

the table, into the imagined river.— Having lain quite still

with the shock of the collapse, now twisting a foot

in hope of finding a purchase, folding hands in prayer,

lifting in supplication eyes that hold for a moment

the heron rising silently from the murky water and mud

flat, follow its graceful ascent, itself all angles, feet

and wings and neck and beak, gaining elevation in small

increments, then veering under the bridge, trailing behind it

what I felt it pull from me, that is with it now, wherever

it has alighted.— It will be the bird's choice, when once more

it takes wing, whether that part of me is left there

or accompanies it, just as it is yours whether to keep

or leave behind what remains with you of me.

— John Simon

A Seacoast area resident for many years, John Simon has lived in Portsmouth for the past two decades. He is a freelance editor and author of d'Arc, a poetry chapbook, and "From Sand to Circuits," a selection of material he wrote or edited for Harvard University. He is facilitator of "Small Portions," a poetry and short fiction open mike event at the Serenity Café, Foyes Corner, Rye, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., on the first and third Mondays of every month.

— Pat Parnell, Stratham

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